Edith Stein Biography

German philosopher Edith Stein was a leading supporter of the early
twentieth century's phenomenological school of thought, which
explored human awareness and perception. A Jew by birth who converted to
Catholicism, she was killed in a Nazi (having to do with members of the
German Socialist Party led by Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945)
concentration camp (a guarded enclosure where political prisoners were
kept) and canonized (declared a saint) in 1998.

Childhood

Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891, in Breslau, Germany. She was
the youngest of eleven children born to Jewish lumber merchants hailing
originally from Silesia (now part of Poland). Raised in a very religious
atmosphere, four of her siblings died

Edith Stein.
Reproduced by permission of the

Corbis Corporation

.

before Stein's birth. Stein's father died when she was
only a year old, leaving her mother, Auguste Stein, in charge of the
debt-ridden business and the surviving children. Because her mother was
required to devote most of her time to work outside the home, her oldest
daughter, Else, took on much of the responsibility of raising the
younger children.

As a child, Stein was known for her intelligence and sense of
humor—she would often recite poetry and make clever remarks. But
she disliked her reputation as "the smart one" of the
family and began to develop a more quiet nature in her early school
days. She attended the Victoria School in Breslau, where she not only
began classes early, but quickly became the top student in her grade.
Her love of learning extended to her hours at home as well, where she
spent much of her free time reading.

At the age of thirteen, Stein underwent a crisis of faith and decided to
leave school. Although she no longer believed in God, she did not
discuss her beliefs with her family and continued to attend religious
services. Stein soon came to terms with her new ideas and decided to
devote her life to teaching and the pursuit of the truth. She returned
to Victoria School and completed her coursework in hopes of attending
college.

Discovering Catholicism

Stein began her advanced education at the University of Breslau in 1911
where she was influenced by the works of Edmund Husserl
(1859–1938) who was a professor of philosophy (the study of
knowledge) at Göttingen University and was the founder of the
school of thought known as phenomenology, an examination of the
development of human awareness. The work was an eye-opener to Stein, who
decided that she wanted to study with Husserl at Göttingen. It was
at Göttingen that Stein was first exposed to the Roman Catholic
faith. When in 1916 Husserl took a professorship at the University of
Freiburg, he requested that Stein join him as his graduate assistant.
She was very successful at Freiburg and soon became known as a top
philosopher at the university.

Stein's interest in Catholicism increased in 1917 which led her
to read the New Testament, the second half of the Bible. These
experiences convinced Stein that she believed in God and the divinity of
Jesus
Christ, but did not convert to Catholicism until 1921.

During a stay at a girl's school in Speyer, Germany, Stein was
encouraged by the Jesuit priest and philosopher Erich Przywara not to
abandon her academic work. At his urging, she began a German translation
of a Latin work on truth by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).
Through her study of Aquinas and her discussions with Przywara, she was
convinced that she could serve God through a search for truth. Her
writing and translations became popular, and Stein was invited to
lecture for a number of groups on religious and women's issues in
Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

Completes book on Jewish life

Attacks on Jewish people were becoming frequent and in 1933, Adolf
Hitler (1889–1945) and his Nazi Party came to power in Germany.
One result of the rise of Hitler was that Stein and other people of
Jewish origin in university positions were fired from her job. Stein
felt that she had a unique opportunity and responsibility, as a
Jewishborn Catholic, to bridge the gap of understanding between
Christians and Jews. To accomplish this, she wrote the book
Aus dem Leben einer Jüdischen Familie,
("Life in a Jewish Family") which tried to show the
similar human experiences of Jews and Christians in their daily lives.
In 1933, she attempted to combine the thoughts of Husserl and Aquinas in
her book
Endliches und ewiges Sein
("Finite and Eternal Being"), completed in 1936. Under
the anti-Jewish laws in effect then, however, the book was refused for
publication and was not printed until 1950.

Because of the Nazi rule, Stein realized she was no longer safe in her
native country and fled to a convent (a community of nuns) in Echt in
the Netherlands on December 31, 1938. In Echt, she was joined by her
sister Rosa, who had also converted to Catholicism.

Killed in concentration camp

In 1942 the Nazis began removing Jews from the Netherlands, and Stein
urgently applied for a Swiss visa (an official authorization of travel)
in order to transfer to a convent in Switzerland. Her sister was unable
to arrange similar travel arrangements, however, and Stein refused to
leave without her. On August 2, 1942, the sisters were removed from the
convent at Echt by Nazi troops and transported to a concentration camp
at Amersfoort, Netherlands, for a few days before being sent on to the
Auschwitz camp in Poland. While nothing is known about their last days
or the exact circumstances of their deaths, it is assumed the women were
among the many people killed in the Nazi gas chambers, placed in mass
graves on the site, and later cremated, or burned to ashes.

In 1987, decades after the travesties of the Jewish Holocaust (the
horrors imposed by the Nazis which resulted in the deaths of thousands
of Jews), Stein was beatified (blessed) by Pope John Paul II
(1920–), who praised her as a Catholic martyr (one who dies for
their beliefs) and also praised her phenomenological works. This created
controversy among Jewish groups, who were upset that she was remembered
in this way since the reason she was killed was because she was a Jew,
not because she was Catholic. In an apologetic statement, John Paul II
acknowledged that her fate was a symbol of
the great loss of Jewish life during World War II (1939–45; a
war fought between the Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the
Allied Powers: England, France, the Soviet Union, and the United
States). This discussion highlighted the difficult, but important place
Stein holds among both Jews and Catholics. Stein's canonization
(emergence to sainthood) by the Pope on October 11, 1998, also drew
protest from some Jews.